The criticism that the mind brought up on modern fiction would be likely to make on the girls of Jane Austen would be the reverse of Whately's. It would be that her chief defect in depicting woman's character was that she almost invariably did force the reader to spin from his own conjectures when the "mysteries of the heart" were the subject of her pages. The truth is divided, I think, between the Archbishop and the supposed modern critic. Jane's heroines are true women, admirably portrayed, but they only represent a certain proportion of their sex. It could never be suspected of Elizabeth, or Elinor, or Anne, or Fanny that there was Southern blood in her veins. There might have been a few drops—no more—in Marianne's. The feelings of the author are reflected in her most attractive characters. She might have married, again and again, of that there can be small doubt; and while for herself she shared Dorothy Osborne's opinion as to the essentials of conjugal happiness, I fancy that she would also have agreed with Dorothy's brother that "all passions have more of trouble than satisfaction in them, and therefore they are happiest that have least of them." That, indeed, as we have already seen, was very much the fault that Miss Brontë found in her as a novelist.
Anne Elliot comes nearer than any of her fellow-heroines to Dorothy Osborne's ideal of the changelessness of affection, the true union of hearts, but, save for her involuntary tears at the Musgroves', she kept her feelings under the most perfect control, and never, we may be sure, tried to beat her convictions into the heads of her silly family, or even of her faithful friend Lady Russell.
There were, we may fairly believe, not a few who would like to have been Jane's chosen mate. One such unhappy being seems, as we read, to be the actor in the little bit of serious comedy related, with lively exaggeration, in a letter written when she was twenty-five years old. "Your unfortunate sister was betrayed last Thursday into a situation of the utmost cruelty. I arrived at Ashe Park before the party from Deane, and was shut up in the drawing-room with Mr. Holder alone for ten minutes. I had some thoughts of insisting on the housekeeper or Mary Corbett being sent for, and nothing could prevail on me to move two steps from the door, on the lock of which I kept one hand constantly fixed."
Elizabeth Bennet was not more uncomfortable when her mother took Kitty up-stairs after breakfast in order that Mr. Collins might have what he called "The honour of a private audience" with the elder girl. "Dear ma'am," Elizabeth cried, "do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins must excuse me. He can have nothing to say to me that anybody need not hear. I am going away myself." But her mother's, "Lizzy, I insist upon your staying and hearing Mr. Collins," compelled her to remain, with results for which we must ever be grateful to Mrs. Bennet. It is not clear, however, that Mr. Holder was a suitor for Jane. We are left in doubt both as to his hopes and his demerits.
There is a little matter connected with the Quarterly's two articles in praise of Jane which is perhaps worth noting here. Gifford, who was editor when both appeared, was so warm a supporter of the Prince Regent that Hazlitt—one of Gifford's "beasts"—wrote in an open letter to him: "When you damn an author, one knows that he is not a favourite at Carlton House." Now the Prince is said to have been so fond of Jane Austen's novels that he kept a set in each of his residences, and it is unquestionable that, in consequence of a suggestion that was "equivalent to a command," she dedicated Emma to him. "You will be pleased to hear," she wrote on April 1, 1816, to John Murray the First, who published the book, "that I have received the Prince's thanks for the handsome copy I sent him of 'Emma.' Whatever he may think of my share of the work, yours seems to have been quite right."
In the same letter she expresses her disappointment at the "total omission of 'Mansfield Park'" in the Quarterly's review of her work in the preceding autumn. As to that review, it is a curious fact that until Lockhart's "Life of Scott" appeared, Whately, who wrote the 1821 article, was credited with the authorship of the earlier review, and it is still to be found against his name in the British Museum catalogue, not from the ignorance of the cataloguers, but because he appears as author on the title-page of a reprint of the article issued at Ahmedabad in 1889.
V
THE IMPARTIAL SATIRIST
What has woman done?—"Nature's Salic law"—Women deficient in satire—Some types in the novels—The female snob—The valetudinarian—The fop—The too agreeable man—"Personal size and mental sorrow"—Knightley's opinion of Emma—Ashamed of relations—Mrs. Bennet—The clergy and their opinions—Worldly life—Absence of dogma—Authors confused with their creations.